Race for the Cure to honor two local women

Ingrid Bias was closing a window the night she felt something wrong with her breast tissue.

“Of course, my heart sank because I knew something was seriously wrong,” said the associate minister at Abundant Life Baptist Church.

Ingrid Bias. Photo Courtesy Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

Bias had a mammogram and biopsy and learned she had three tumors in her breasts. Within 30 days of her discovery in the summer of 2011, she had a double mastectomy, a second surgery and chemotherapy.

Now in the summer of 2012, her annual MRI has come back clean, she’s on a vegetarian diet and she’s lost 25 pounds. She is also the “In Celebration” honoree for the 19th Annual Northwest Ohio Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. The Sept. 30 race takes place Downtown and includes a Survivors Tent and Parade.

The 5K run/walk earned the local Komen affiliate about $1 million last year. Most of that money goes to support grants in the 24-county area the affiliate serves and the rest goes to support research. The affiliate is aiming to have 20,000 participants at its Race for the Cure event this year.

“The Race for the Cure is our primary way of raising revenue,” said Mary Westphal, executive director of the chapter. “It literally means saving lives in the fight against breast cancer right here locally in the community.”

Bias said she is grateful to be the honoree this year, but it “leaves a bittersweet taste in your mouth.”

“I pretty much went through hell to be the honoree,” she said. Much of Bias’ treatment was funded by grants from Komen to CareNet.

“We have pretty much worked hand in hand since,” Bias said. “They are a rare group, I must say. Mary and those women talk to me like we’ve been friends for life.”

One of the reasons Bias is passionate about Komen is its support of African-American women. African-American women older than 40 in Northwest Ohio are diagnosed at a significantly lower rate than white women, but their mortality rate is nearly equal, according to Komen.

“Right now, I don’t see anybody else out there saying, ‘What can we do for African-American women? What can we do to keep them alive?’” Bias said.

Bias recently went through training to be a community health adviser to minority women. The training was courtesy of a $1 million grant from KeyBank Foundation and will eventually serve more than 110,000 women.

“Breast cancer is diagnosed every two minutes, and a woman dies of breast cancer every 13 minutes in the United States,” said Beth E. Mooney, KeyCorp chairman in a news release. “Its impact is especially devastating for women of color, who are more likely to die from breast cancer, and for poor or uninsured women.”

Now Bias makes a point to educate other women on the eight signs of breast cancer and accompanies women to mammograms and treatment.

“If a stranger talks to me too long, it’s gonna come up,” she said. Bias encouraged women to get checked out, especially if they are scared.

“I encourage them to go in. You know why? Because if they’re scared, there’s a reason for it,” she said. Bias also emphasized taking vanity out of the equation.

“When I’m talking about the vanity, in the African-American community, we don’t want to be ostracized for a mastectomy,” she said. “Women have to realize a lot of women have had mastectomies.”

“There’s life after a mastectomy. You can’t make it about somebody else. You have to make it about you,” she said.

Westphal said of Bias, “She is a very strong woman. She’s very inspiring. She’s a woman who has battled breast cancer with grace and style.”

Margaret “Lambie” Guyton Stout will also be honored at the race. Stout, a mother and businesswoman, died from breast cancer Sept. 11, 2011, at 42.

The race will include a three-quarter-mile “Fun Walk” with mascots and prompts like “hop like bunny,” starting at 10 a.m. There will also be a Kids for the Cure play area at Fifth Third Field. Parental supervision is required.

Online registration is available at komennwohio.org. Registration can also be mailed to 1255 Corporation Drive, P.O. Box 1147, Holland, 43528. On-site registration is available race day at 7:30-9 a.m. at Fifth Third Field. Brondes Ford Maumee will have registration 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sept. 27 and 28 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 29.

The race begins at 9:30 a.m. Sept. 30. The survivor parade is at 8:45 a.m. and the awards ceremony is 10:45 a.m. Race-day registration is $45. Pre-registration is $30 for adults and $20 for those younger than 17. For a map and complete schedule, visit www.komennwohio.org/komen-race-for-the-cure.

In life and in death, Toledoan Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon serves others

Between a busy career at Libbey Glass and frequent chemotherapy treatments, Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon made time to love everyone.

She made time to grant wishes for sick children enrolled in the Make-A-Wish Foundation program. She made time to counsel women battling breast cancer. She made time to raise her daughter Lily, devote full attention to her friends in need and, of course, dress fashionably.

She set aside so much time for these things that she was always late.

“My wife was late to everything but I don’t know anybody that really got upset with her for being late. The reason she was late was because she was with another person and was giving them her total attention and when you were with her you were the center of her world,” said her husband, Phil Skeldon. “I think that’s what made her a success in every aspect of her life.”

When cancer claimed Gotthart Skeldon in 2010, her friends immediately knew they wanted to carry on her work. They created a fund to support area agencies that aid children with disabilities and illnesses and women who have breast cancer. Within the year, they had planned their biggest fundraiser and, naturally, decided to title the event “Fashionably Late.”

“She never wasted a minute,” said longtime friend Gretchen DeBacker. “She found out she was sick back in 1993 and I think that somewhere inside she believed that her time was going to be short, so she used every possible minute that she could and most of it was in the service of helping other people.”

And she’d also spend some of those minutes dancing. As a tribute to her fun-loving attitude, Fashionably Late offers a night of music and dancing to raise money for the Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon Fund.

The Homewreckers and Air Margaritaville will rock Centennial Terrace in Sylvania on Aug. 24 for the fundraiser, marking the third year that Toledoans have come together to remember Gotthart Skeldon and donate to local organizations.

The Fashionably Late fundraiser is the biggest moneymaker for the fund, collecting about $30,000 at last year’s event and contributing to the pool of $90,000 given to area agencies within the past three years.

Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon and her daughter, Lily, in 2008.

Major beneficiaries include Susan G. Komen of Northwest Ohio, the Toledo Ballet, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Sunshine, a respite center for children with disabilities.

The fund focuses on organizations such as these because of Gotthart Skeldon’s legacy. She grew up in Toledo, attending Central Catholic High School and then University of Toledo. She graduated with a business degree and landed a job working with Libbey Glass. She worked her way into a national sales manager position and was designated the sales leader of the year six times throughout her career, including the year before she died.

“Through all of this — through chemo treatment after chemo treatment and hair falling out … outside of her chemo treatment, I don’t think she ever missed a day of work,” Skeldon said. “And it was never about selling a product. It was about meeting people and having fun with people and if the product sold, so be it.”

When she wasn’t on the clock, Gotthart Skeldon was volunteering. She was a wish granter for Make-A-Wish Foundation, meaning she would orchestrate a family’s trip to Disney World, and she also worked with Susan G. Komen of Northwest Ohio supporting women with breast cancer. She sang in her church choir for 25 years at Blessed Sacrament and was known for throwing fabulous baby and wedding showers, DeBacker said.

Gotthart Skeldon battled cancer on and off for years, beating the disease into remission a few times. She died in February of 2010 when the disease metastasized to her liver, DeBacker said.

“She always said, ‘I don’t want the disease to define me; I want to be known as Gretchen not a person with cancer,’” Skeldon said. “Even during all this bout with cancer, I could never be down, because she was never down. She even cheered up the doctors.”

Skeldon met his wife at a Bible study group at Corpus Christi University Parish in 2000 and they married a few years later when Gotthart Skeldon was 39 years old. Although doctors had told her that her years of cancer treatment would preclude her from having children, Gotthart Skeldon and her husband were able to have a baby. Their child, Lily, is now 7 years old.

“She was just a very kind person and, you know, some people talk about people who have died in that way and everyone has good qualities and misses people after they die, but Gretchen was special in the way she impacted the lives of the people she interacted with,” DeBacker said. “And when you were in her presence, that was it.”

Since Gotthart Skeldon’s death, the fund has supported a number of programs at local agencies. This year, Susan G. Komen of Northwest Ohio started a program funded by the Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon Fund that offers up to $400 to uninsured or underinsured breast cancer patients to pay for daily life expenses, such as transportation, food, rent or utilities, said Mary Westphal, executive director of Susan G. Komen of Northwest Ohio.

Starting in 2011, the fund also allowed Susan G. Komen of Northwest Ohio to provide 13 screening mammograms, 15 diagnostic mammograms, 24 computer-aided detections and five breast ultrasounds to 21 uninsured women between the ages of 18 and 39.

Twenty-eight uninsured women between 40 and 44 were also able to obtain mammograms and ultrasounds.

“[Gretchen] was a woman full of life and energy,” Westphal said. “She was magical when she walked in the room — you just felt happy.”

The Toledo Ballet facilitates an adaptive dance program for children with Down syndrome, also funded in part by the Gretchen Gotthart Skeldon Fund. Developed at the Boston Ballet in partnership with the Boston Children’s Hospital, the program teaches balance, flexibility and following directions. The fund awarded scholarships to children interested in enrolling, said Mari Davies, executive director at the Toledo Ballet.

Fashionably Late will begin at 7 p.m. Aug. 24 and run until midnight. Tickets cost $20 each. For more information, call (419) 537-9956 or visit www.gretchenfund.org.

“Gretchen was a very faith-filled person … I think people really felt the presence of God in her and spiritually it boosted their lives,” Skeldon said. “People came away feeling much more positive about life after they met Gretchen.”